First bass No.5 – Off with his head!!

So, here we are with yet another bass guitar in my fickle fingers…

This is an 80’s classic – the Westone Superheadless. Its name , as you can see by the pics, is self-evident. It had a Steinberger inspired tuning section below the bridge, but its weak point was the string clamp that held the strings at the blunt end of the neck. It featured one bar that clamped across all four strings at the same time, so in a gig situation, a solitary string break meant that you had to slacken off ALL the strings at the same time! Nightmare! I had mine modified to take a more user-friendly 4 -point system that allowed clamping and release of individual strings. This model seemed quite rare to me. I never saw another one quite like it, it had see-through pillar-box red paint, with a beautiful birds-eye maple visible underneath, and all-black fittings, whereas most others I saw were an unappealing dirty-brown colour. This one saw off my Aria pro ll and became my favourite for a few years in the 80’s.

You won’t be surprised to know that it went the way of the others eventually…for a short while I had a Status headless – supposedly a wonderful instrument, and considerably more pricey than this Westone, but I hated it with a passion, it played like a cricket bat, and probably sounded like one. Small wonder I have no pictures of it!

These shots were taken at a charity show in South Yorkshire. I remember very little about it – except that we were on with a band called Slug the Nightwatchman!

I’m enjoying this little recollection of your basses over the years. I remember doing an outdoor gig with you guys in 1984 which looked remarkably like the pics above (I’ve seen a couple of other pics that match). It was either Skellow Grange or perhaps somewhere in Bentley. Our band Telecom Shuffle was pre-Slug The nightwatchman, though a couple of members went on to form Slug a year or so later. Maybe you did that one as well.

Always remember that Flock Of Seagulls track you did – loved the guitar on that.

Hey Mark! You have actually kick-started my dodgy memory! I think it WAS Telecom Shuffle that day, and the Slug thing was a little later! Skellow it was. Yeah, Fos our guitarist did a fine job on the Flock track, and did a mean U2 as well. We still gig together as part of Christie, and we’re touring Europe this year.

Yeah Kev, it was a nice sunny day in Skellow as the pics show. Yes you DID do a mean U2 as well! ‘Pride’ wasn’t it? Glad to see you’re still busy doing stuff. The Gonads was a surprise I must say, but I also had a little spell with something not entirely dissimilar – weird how life pans out eh? All the best. Mark.